Introduction

This 5-day professional training equips participants with hands-on skills to transform raw data into meaningful, interactive, and visually compelling dashboards using Tableau. The course focuses on best practices in data visualization, storytelling, and decision-making, with practical applications in project management, M&E, humanitarian programs, business intelligence, and research.

Participants will learn to connect, clean, analyze, and visualize data effectively while adhering to professional visualization standards for reports, donor presentations, and executive dashboards.

Learning Objectives

By the end of the training, participants will be able to:

1. Understand principles of effective data visualization
2. Connect Tableau to multiple data sources
3. Clean and prepare data for visualization
4. Create interactive charts, maps, and dashboards
5. Apply filters, parameters, and calculations
6. Design dashboards for analysis and storytelling

Publish and share Tableau dashboards professionally

Important Dates
Classroom Training Calendar

Online Training Calendar

Course Outline

Day 1: Introduction to Data Visualization & Tableau

• Importance of data visualization in decision-making
• Visualization best practices and common mistakes
• Overview of Tableau ecosystem (Desktop, Server, Public)
• Connecting to data sources (Excel, CSV, databases)
• Understanding data types, dimensions, and measures
• Creating basic charts and visualizations

Day 2: Data Preparation & Calculations

• Data cleaning and preparation in Tableau
• Handling missing data and data normalization
• Creating calculated fields
• Using date functions and aggregations
• Sorting, grouping, and formatting data
• Practical exercises on real-world datasets

Day 3: Advanced Visualizations & Mapping

• Advanced charts (heat maps, tree maps, bullet charts)
• Creating interactive filters and parameters
• Introduction to geographic mapping in Tableau
• Using shapefiles and spatial data
• Visualizing trends and comparisons
• Practical mapping and dashboard exercises

Day 4: Dashboard Design & Data Storytelling

• Principles of dashboard design
• Building interactive dashboards
• Applying actions (filter, highlight, navigation)
• Storytelling with data using Tableau Stories
• Designing dashboards for donors, managers, and stakeholders
• Practical exercise: Building a professional dashboard

Day 5: Publishing, Sharing & Best Practices

• Optimizing dashboards for performance
• Publishing dashboards (Tableau Server/Public)
• Sharing dashboards securely
• Exporting visuals for reports and presentations
• Best practices for professional reporting
• Course review, assessment, and certification

Targeted Participants

This course is suitable for:

• Data Analysts and Data Scientists
• Monitoring & Evaluation (M&E) Officers
• Project and Program Managers
• Business Intelligence Professionals
• Researchers and Academics
• NGO, Government, and Private Sector Staff

Course Customization Tracks

1. Humanitarian Programs Track

Focus Areas

• Emergency response data visualization
• Needs assessments and situation reports (SitReps)
• Donor reporting dashboards (UN, USAID, EU, NGOs)
• Geographic and population-based analysis

2. Monitoring & Evaluation (M&E) Track

Focus Areas

• Results-based management (RBM) visualization
• Logical frameworks (Logframes) and indicator tracking
• Baseline, midline, and endline survey analysis
• Outcome and impact visualization

3. Business Intelligence (BI) Track

Focus Areas

• Organizational performance dashboards
• Sales, finance, and operations analytics
• Executive and management reporting
• Data-driven decision support